POETRY

Dreaming of a Whole New World

By Mandy Shunnarah     VOLUME 58 No. 2

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Before I knew the flower, she was a name:
Jasmine, from the Disney movie Aladdin,
a VHS I watched so many times, the tape
wore thin from rewind & I tore through Sedo
& Taita’s house asking for lamps, exasperated
when they pointed to electric bulbs.

I found the gravy boat in the back kitchen cabinet
& rubbed my hands raw on its ceramic surface,
palms red with hoping for a genie to grant wishes
for kittens because I wasn’t a horse girl. Taita asked,
What you are doing with him? & there had to be
a blue djinn inside. Why else hide the vessel?

Kittens, a magic carpet since my Barbie Jeep didn’t
allow me to leave the yard, & to be a princess--
my three wishes. Taita tittered: When you are older,
I take you to the old country & you have any man
you want. Green eyes, fair skin, american citizenshib:
you have your bick, habibti! Sure, you’ll be brincess.

But with a lamp, I could have my enchantment,
my shining, shimmering, splendid, without a man.
With prayer & grandchildren, Taita could have her
right of return before she died outside the homeland.
We both believed in the impossible, the glittering
hope that makes Palestinians dreamers all.

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MANDY SHUNNARAH (they / them) is an Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer in Columbus, OH. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in the New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. They won the 2024 Porter House Review Editor’s Prize in Poetry, and their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024 from Belt Publishing. Their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is out now from Diode Editions. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.


VOLUME 58 No. 2